Back when I was in college, I spent several summers selling used pre-owned cars at a dealership in sunny Southern California. After a lot of moving and a career change, my dad found himself in the car business for several years and told me his workplace was always looking for frontline salespeople. My previous summer job involved wrangling rogue shopping carts from a parking lot in 98-degree heat all day outside a local Walmart, so I was up for anything different.   

I interviewed and got the summer gig. On my first day, I remember the sales manager sitting a few of us down for what I thought would be an hour lecture on the 10-step process to making a sale. Instead, we received an unexpected lesson. He told us, “When the customer comes on to our lot, greet them and do everything possible to find the common ground. Everything else will flow from that.”

I put my hand up, “What about telling them all about the cars?” “That’s not important,” he said. “When they step on this lot, they want to know they can trust you and then feel good about the car, in that order. Our inventory is solid, what it needs is the connection that you provide. But there won’t be any sale unless you start with the rapport or common ground ASAP.”

Off I went to stand under a large oak tree at the front of the lot with about seven other sales staff. We’d each call out cars coming around the corner by their colors, in the hopes that if that car pulled into the curb or dealership, it would be your customer. Some hours in, I saw a minivan come around the corner and called out “blue.” Slowly, the van pulled into the curb and my heart started racing. A mother with two children came out of the car and walked onto the lot.

I walked over and greeted her with a smile and “Hi, I’m Don.” Then, panic. “Okay, find the common ground, find the common ground,” I kept thinking. I looked around. Nothing. I’m not a parent, I don’t have kids. Then, there it was. A sticker on the side of the car with “AYSO” [American Youth Soccer Organization], something I could speak to. “Do your kids play soccer? I played all through high school.” The mother turned and smiled, “Yes, and we’re driving all over the place every weekend getting these two to matches, it’s exhausting…” And off we went in conversation. I’ll spare the rest, but about an hour and half later, she and the kids drove off our lot with a new minivan.

Photo by Volkan Vardar via Pexels

Find the Common Ground, Then Differences

Whenever you meet someone new, find the common ground ASAP. You just got a small library’s worth of information in a single sentence. This isn’t just a nice piece of advice, it’s a practice supported by reams of social science. Starting with this theory alone shows you the tested foundations on which it’s built. But more than the need to find the common ground, there’s a particular order that’s important here: finding the common ground first before moving to differences.

We live in a world of rich diversity and differences with others that is vital to acknowledge and work with. But we’re also creatures riddled with biases, selective ways of viewing, and often eager to channel our tribalist and survivalist histories into the present. David Livermore finds that entire academic fields are rightly formed on the critical differences between human beings. Yet these disciplines seldom stop to ask what people in the U.S., Brazil, China, Botswana, Tonga, and so on all have in common? Apparently, we all like food, we all wear some form of clothing, and listen to some forms of music, among other considerations. From these topics alone, there’s millions of different expressions and divisions, of course, but the point is that there’s always common ground that can be tapped into.

Let’s kick it up a level. Reversing the order and starting with division can lay the groundwork for inequality. Heather McGhee meticulously documents how a pernicious “zero-sum” story that starts with “if they get, I lose” continues to support public policies and racial injustices that end up not just harming targeted minority groups, but eventually majorities who end up with diminished public goods such as food security, healthcare, and housing. As a representative anecdote, she highlights how many public swimming pools in the U.S. have historically been drained in many white communities when people of color started moving into their neighborhoods. Rather than having public pools that everyone could access, congregate, and enjoy, the irony is that “zero-sum” thinking ends up as a shot in the foot. Starting with division can have real, material consequences in the world.

Finding common ground and understanding differences are both goals. But as much as possible for communication and leadership effectiveness start with the former before moving to the latter. John Maxwell has another way of putting it: find the one percent you can agree on and then give it one hundred percent of your effort. So, start practicing this today in one-to-one conversations online or in person. At every opportunity, find some unity first.